Supreme Court divided on bump stock ban

WASHINGTON (CN) — A Texas man’s challenge to a ban on bump stocks seemed to stump the Supreme Court on Wednesday, dividing the justices over whether devices that allow guns to fire hundreds of rounds per minute should be considered machine guns. 

Many of the conservative justices seemed troubled by the nearly century-old statute before them that the government argued should outlaw a 21st-century device. 

“Intuitively, I am entirely sympathetic to your argument,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Donald Trump appointee. “It seems like yes, this is functioning like a machine gun would, but looking at that definition, I think the question is why didn't Congress pass legislation to make this covered more clearly.” 

It’s also not clear, however, if ambiguity over statutory text will be enough to topple the Trump-era rule that banned bump stocks after a gunman fired over a thousand shots into an outdoor concert in Las Vegas using one of the devices. 

The justices circled around how bump stocks operate for the majority of the hour-and-a-half argument session, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, characterized these efforts as fruitless since she views the function of a bump stock the same as that of a machine gun. 

“Why would Congress want to prohibit certain things based on whether the trigger is moving as opposed to certain things that can achieve this lethal kind of spray of bullets?” Jackson said. 

Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said Congress was attempting to limit the amount of bullets a shooter could fire with very little effort. She equated the trigger used in the statute to the bump stock. 

“Maybe they didn't define the bump stock as the trigger, but it functions in precisely the same way and a torrent of bullets comes out,” Kagan said. “This is in the heartland of what they were concerned about, which is anything that takes just a little human action to produce more than one shot.”

Bump stocks attach to the end of a rifle, sliding back and forth to trigger the firing sequence. These devices allow a semi-automatic weapon to discharge hundreds of rounds per minute. A rifle with a bump stock can fire between 400 and 800 bullets per minute — similar to a machine gun. The government estimates that the average person can only fire around 60 bullets per minute with a semi-automatic weapon. 

The United States began restricting the use of machine guns in the 1930s to respond to gang violence. By 1986, Congress put a pause on the sale and transfer of machine guns — barring new firearms from entering the market. 

When bump stocks first came on the market in 2002, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not categorize them as machine guns. The government then changed course and said spring-loaded bump stocks did qualify as machine guns. 

Gun manufacturers developed the bump stock at issue here in the wake of that decision. This bump stock does not use a spring, instead relying on the shooter’s forward pressure to trigger the device. 

There was agreement during oral arguments that bump stocks allow firearms to discharge hundreds of bullets. The contention came over whether the bump stock allowed a shooter to do so with a single function of the trigger. 

Michael Cargill, who was forced to surrender his bump stocks after the government’s updated rule, told the justices that although the bump stock allowed multiple discharges, it only triggered one shot per function of the trigger. 

“The process depends entirely on human effort and exertion as the shooter must continually and repeatedly thrust the force back of the rifle forward with his nonshooting hand, while simultaneously maintaining backward pressure on the weapon with his shooting hand,” said Jonathan Mitchell, an attorney with Mitchell Law representing Cargill. “None of these acts are automated.” 

The government countered that bump stocks eliminate the manual movements a shooter must usually do to fire multiple shots by applying steady forward pressure to the rifle. 

“Once the shooter presses forward to fire the first shot, the bump stock uses the gun's recoil energy to create a continuous back-and-forth cycle that fires hundreds of shots per minute,” said Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general at the Department of Justice. 

Several of the justices expressed concerns that Americans who have had bump stocks legally for years would now find themselves with an outlawed device.

“Through many administrations, the government took the position that bump stocks are not machine guns, and then you adopted an interpretive rule — not even a legislative rule — saying otherwise,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee. “That would render between a quarter of a million and a half million people federal felons.” 

The government assured the court that individuals who owned a bump stock prior to the government’s rule would not be prosecuted. Gorsuch joked about gun owners being avid readers of the federal register, suggesting that many people could be unaware of the updated policy, but the government said its rule was widely publicized. 

The justices will issue a ruling in the case by the end of June. 

Follow @KelseyReichmann

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